


Exit, Through the Heart

by TheSpaceCoyote



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, Protectiveness, Self-Sacrifice, monster attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-04 15:37:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14596176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSpaceCoyote/pseuds/TheSpaceCoyote
Summary: An experimental stalker is let loose in R&D, forcing Rhys and Jack to put everything on the line to save one another.





	Exit, Through the Heart

**Author's Note:**

> I've been really craving some injury and hurt/comfort stuff with these guys! I hope you all enjoy! :)

Aside from his office and penthouse, Jack thought Research and Development was the most secure place in all of Helios.

And one would naturally expect that, right? With the amount of seriously dangerous research going on in there, an insane degree of security must have been funneled into its defenses. Jack was pretty sure he’d co-signed on such things himself.

So _why_ the newly developed experimental stalker was able to break out of its enclosure was beyond Jack’s understanding. 

Not that he even had much time for rage before the creature began its attack, biting the head off of the nearest researcher before going on the warpath. Screams and death gurgles suddenly filled the room as the monster crashed against consoles and railings, sending sparks of broken technology flying as it laid waste to the scientists that’d sinned against nature to bring it to life. 

Jack swore as he grabbed Rhys’ hand, quickly putting distance between themselves and the creature before it cut through the buffer of disposable researchers. He pulled his pistol out of its holster, growling as he tried to pick out a vulnerable spot in a creature that’d been specifically engineered to _not_ have any. Finally, he just picked a place at random that seemed likely to be lethal—or at least slow the thing _down_ so they could get to the automatic doors—and fired off a shock bullet straight between the creature’s furious eyes. 

At first, Jack thought it’d worked. The creature stopped in its tracks, teeth clenched around the mangled body of its latest victim. The electricity vibrated down its spine and out to its limbs, all muscles spasming uncontrollable. Jack thought the creature would finally go down after that, but then the newly-grown barbs running down the stalker’s back started quivering with the force of the static.

Oh no. Quills. The frikkin’ _quills_ that had been Jack’s suggestion. Needle stalkers jacked up to eleven, with spines nearly the length of a grown man’s leg. After all, he’d wanted not only a bigger, badder, tougher stalker, but one with a couple more bells and whistles to take out a large crowd and send the survivors scattering. The quills were meant to fire out all at once, in every direction, taking out as many targets as possible. 

Jack’s train of thought suddenly ground to a halt as he watched the quills shiver, triggered by the shock damage squeezing the stalker’s muscles, and before he could figure out a proper place to take cover the creature let out an agonized, ear-splitting roar and fired the spines from its back like a hail of bullets. 

Something hard slammed into Jack’s chest a split second before a sharp, sudden pain lanced into his abdomen. He swore loudly as he fell back hard against the metal floor, impact reverberating through his entire body. His pistol skittered from his numb fingers as his head banged back. Spots of color exploded in his vision and a touch of bile surged up his throat, burning the back of his mouth. He coughed, and something warm splashed against his chest that had his heart seizing in fear. 

“ _Ow_ , frikkin’ burns—crap!” Jack hissed, trying to forcibly steady his vision and temper his fear. Wouldn’t do him a lot of good if he fell into a panic before he was able to asses whatever damage the quills had done to him. He shut his eyes closed until the vibrating colors beneath his eyelids stopped spinning so quick, before carefully prying them open. 

The first thing he saw was, of course, the tip of one of those frikkin’ quills stuck into his stomach. The pulse of pain told him it’d pierced all his layers and into his flesh, though only a small circle of blood soaked out from the wound. Jack hissed, trying to move as little as possible as he slid his hand down the front of his body until he reached the barb. 

He breathed out a little of the tension twisting through his body as soon as he felt that it hadn’t stuck in quite as deep as he’d initially feared. It hurt like hell, but it wasn’t deep enough to be anything more than a superficial wound. He shook his head with a terse laugh. 

“Guess it’s good I hadn’t told them to breed toxins into the thing yet….right Rhysi—“

A harsh, wet cough from above cut him off. Jack lifted his eyes just as a rain of blood splattered down on him, staining his shirt and chin. Jack blinked rapidly, trying to take in the reality of the terrible sight arching above him.

Rhys’ skin was white as bone, the only scrap of color on his face the dying pink lips that were now dripping with thick rivulets of blood. His hair had fallen out of its usual style in the scuffle, little strands sticking to the cold sweat breaking out across his forehead. Jack’s heart leapt in alarm, voice stuck in his throat as he dropped his gaze down from Rhys’ stricken face, trying to figure out what’d happened to his lover.

He didn’t have to look far.

The quill that had pierced Jack’s stomach protruded from just below Rhys’ sternum, connecting them along a curve of bloodied keratin. Jack had never wanted to be this close to one of the stalker’s vile quills, but now he’d been forced to see how the quill was lined with little, feathery barbs, each of which now dripped with blood from where they’d dragged against the meat of Rhys’ poor body. 

“Oh…oh _god_ , pumpkin—“ Jack managed to croak out, hating how his hands trembled as he lifted them, trying to think of anything he could do to help. Rhys coughed, his entire body shuddering, and Jack thought he might be trying to say something but only more blood came up.Rhys’ eyelids fluttered, the glow in his ECHOeye starting to fade.

Jack finally managed to sit up, despite the piercing pain from the quill in his belly, hands solidly catching Rhys as he fell forward. Jack’s injured stomach plummeted towards his groan at the dead weight against his hands.

“Kiddo—Rhysie, come on, hang on, don’t do this—“ Jack hissed at the change in position, the tip of the barb inside him digging further into his flesh as he tried to properly hold his injured boyfriend. Jack huffed tense air between his teeth, holding Rhys steady as he stood them both up on their knees. He inched back, grunting and nearly screaming as he tried to pull the tip of the quill out of his body, those little barbs catching on his skin and tearing the wound open further. He knew it was a bad idea to remove this, but his wound was fairly shallow, at least relative to Rhys’ own. 

With a final grunt from Jack the quill’s tip pulled out of his stomach. He could feel blood start to flow more profusely without the quill to plug it closed, though the amount trickling down his belly pales in comparison to what was leaking from poor Rhys’ mouth. With the quill finally free, Jack was able to properly cradle his boyfriend in his arms—not that the sight below him did anything to stave off his mounting panic. 

Rhys’ mouth was moving slowly, raspy whispers barely audible. The quill had pierced right through him, must’ve nicked either his lungs or stomach if he was puking up blood. Loud noises and shouting clanged all around him, but everything but the slow, labored breathing of his boyfriend sounded muffled in Jack’s ears. 

For the first time in a long while, Handsome Jack was at a loss. His body and brain refused to work together, overwhelmed with the steady clench of fear as he watched the life drain from his boyfriend’s body. 

Jack watched his hands rove over Rhys’ body as if he was little more than a bystander in all this, divorced from reality until his eyes came to rest on his glowing blue wristwatch and all his attention snapped to it in realization. 

Back in his earliest days as CEO, Jack had ordered a team to reverse-engineer some health-hypo plans lifted from Anshin, with a couple characteristic Hyperion enhancements thrown in for good measure. The most potent of these prototypes had, naturally, found its way into Jack’s hands for his exclusive use. 

He kept it on him all these years in case of the most dire of emergencies, a last line of defense against would be assassins who might want to surprise Jack with a bullet to the heart. He had it now clasped to the inside of his watch, rigged to inject directly into his wrist at the press of the button. It wasn’t easy to detach from the metal band, not with his fingers shaking and slick with blood, but after a couple seconds of deep breathing he dislodged the minute syringe from its hidden dock. 

He stabbed the flesh of Rhys’ wrist a couple times before finding a vein and crushing the plunger. He watched the brightly glowing red liquid pulse into Rhys’ arm, praying it wasn’t too late to take hold. 

“Come on baby…come on…don’t give up on me now…” Jack kept repeating, kept babbling on and on, even when the color of the Anshin crawled up to Rhys’ cheeks, flushing them close to the pink they’d had beforehand. But Rhys still didn’t move, didn’t twitch, and as Jack’s own vision swam he didn’t know if his lover had stopped breathing or not. 

The shouts around him grew closer and louder, and Jack thought he heard his own name, but he was beyond understanding. His own stomach felt like fire, even as wetness spread over his middle and down onto his pants. He felt hands grab his shoulders and tip his head back to face the intricate ceiling above, and suddenly all the shock and adrenaline and blood loss caught up with him like a violent storm. 

Jack let out one final, hoarse _Rhysie_ before his eyes tipped up towards the back of his skull and he passed out into the arms of the emergency team, his lover still laid across his lap.

* * *

Jack’s heartbeat returned to him slowly, the steady _ba-dump_ throbbing in his ears. The sound helped to ground his thoughts even as they swam dizzily about, his consciousness groping towards the bright white of the lights above him.

Jack slowly opened his eyes, lids fluttering as he adjusted to the sight. His body felt both heavy and numb at once, and at first he felt content to just stay motionless, but then his head tipped towards his shoulder and his eyes fell upon the man sitting at his bedside. 

_Rhys_.

Jack jolted, trying to force himself upright only for a sudden soreness to lance through his core. He hissed in pain, fist pounding against the soft bedding beneath him as he struggled to stay upright. A hand carefully rested against his shoulder, pushing against the minute resistance until Jack finally relented and rested back against the bed.

He frowned softly at the treatment, even as his heart leapt with relief. Rhys was next to him, sitting up and _alive_ , with not a trace of blood nor sign of the quill that’d pierced through his body last Jack had seen him. The CEO could’ve cried with relief if he wasn’t so damn exhausted. For the best, anyway. Rhys was okay. He didn’t need to see Jack cry. 

Long fingers stroked the hair off of his forehead, before falling to rest against his cheek. 

“You’re an idiot, you know that?” Rhys said, though the insult was soft. Jack still snorted, though his words similarly had little bite.

“Jeez…that anyway to treat the guy who saved your bacon?”

“Heh…think…if you remember right…there was some two-way bacon-saving going on.”

Jack furrowed his brow at the memory. _Right_. Rhys had thrown himself in the path of danger to protect him. Tossed his life on the chopping block to make sure Jack made it out of that enclosure all right. 

Alive and fine as he was now, the thought that Rhys had almost died for Jack’s sake was…not fun, to put it lightly. 

The CEO’s vision clarified more and more as the seconds passed. At first, he was content to let Rhys pet his hair, listening to the combined sounds of their breathing. After a couple minutes, though, his eyes fluttered back open and roved over his boyfriend’s seated form, taking better stock of his current state. 

Rhys looked tinier than usual in the pale blue hospital gown. His flesh forearm stuck out pale and skinny from underneath the slight stiffness of the tied sleeve, skin mottled with little bruises in different stages of healing. The other shoulder of the gown deflated inwards, and it took Jack a couple seconds of staring to realize the surgeons must have removed Rhys’ cybernetic. 

He looked better than he had bleeding out in Jack’s arms with a stalker quill stabbed through his chest, but only by a little. Still, the pink in his cheeks and his lips was warm and encouraging. 

“Feel like crap…ugh _…_ is this really all from such a dinky lil’ flesh wound?” Jack groaned as he fumbled underneath the thin blankets for the hem of his gown, interested in taking a look for himself at the aftermath of the attack.

“Well…your doctor told me ripping the quill out didn’t do you any favors…it had these little hooks, see?” Rhys wiggled his forefinger to imitate what he figured they might look like. “And they kind of….dug into you and made the whole wound a lot worse. Also, you’re really not supposed to pull things like that out.”

Jack sighed. 

“Yeah, I _know_ , kiddo. But I wasn’t gonna be able to help you with the both of us shish-kebbabed together.”

“Yes…well…that’s why.” Rhys looked away, suddenly focused on one of the anatomy charts hung up on the wall. Jack finally found the hem of his shirt, rolling it up the length of his body to get a good look at his stomach. 

He winced. 

Scars from wounds bigger than paper cuts had a hit or miss track record when it came to healing over. Jack could already tell from looking at this one it wouldn’t be one of those that faded all nice and silvery against his skin after a few weeks. Even with the healing hypo he’d been presumably pumped with, the scar still pulsed angry and dark pink, its edges ragged and messy from where the quill’s barbs had ripped on their way out. 

Jack might be able to get it reconstructed with surgery, but after this was all said and done he didn’t want to set foot near a doctor for at least a good decade. He laid back against the pillows, letting the hospital gown flutter back down over the scar. 

“Stupid stalker…wasn’t supposed to get _me_ …wasn’t supposed to get _either_ of us.” Jack folded his arms over his chest, head tipping to the side to look back at Rhys.

“So…are…are you…” Jack gestured vaguely towards his boyfriend’s chest. “You’re like. Good, right? All better?”

Rhys expression faltered, his hand carefully brushing up against the spot underneath his sternum. Though Jack knew the wound must be healed by now, he didn’t miss the little wince that flickered through Rhys’ face. 

“It’s….I mean, I only really know what they told me.”

Jack waited.

“…And? What did they tell you?” He asked when Rhys failed to respond right away. 

“There’s….well there’s still some of the…the _stuff_ in me.” Rhys retracted his hand from where the wound had been, instead using it to nervously rub the back of his head. “I guess….I guess the Anshin-thing made the flesh heal around it and they haven’t been able to get those barbs out yet?”

Jack couldn’t entirely wrap his mind around exactly what had happened, but the gist of it—that Rhys hadn’t been entirely healed of his wound, sent the hair on the back of his neck bristling with anger.

“What…what the hell am I _paying_ these freaks for, if not to get my frikkin’ _boyfriend_ fixed up good as new?” Jack snarled, bracing his hands against the railing and trying to push himself up from the bed. “ _Idiots_ …call ‘em in here, I’m gonna give them a piece of my mind.”

“Easy, big guy,” Rhys soothed, placing a hand atop Jack’s shoulder. This time, he didn’t press Jack back down against the bed, merely staying any further movement. 

“Easy…why do I gotta take it _easy_ , when they’re the ones not doing their jobs…” Jack growled softly, frustration simmering. 

He didn’t get it. He had wealth beyond his wildest dreams, a squadron of highly trained doctors armed with the best medical technology this side of the universe at his disposal. He’d even used his prize emergency Anshin to make _sure_ Rhys would be saved—and now the kid was telling him even that hadn’t been _enough_. There were still pieces of that _thing_ inside of him, taunting Jack though they sat embedded so deep neither he nor Rhys could see them. 

Whatever tears Jack had managed to hold back when he’d first seen Rhys alive now overwhelmed him, bubbling up in the corners of his eyes even as he tried to smear them against his pillow.

Rhys said nothing as Jack cried, trying to bite out his furious sobbing into his lower lip. His scar throbbed a little every time his body shuddered, pain eventually enough to dry his cries to a trickle. Jack felt like he’d been punched in the chest onto of everything else he’d been through, his lungs full of a miserable weight that somehow still made him feel empty.

“ _Ugh_ …I did my frikkin’ best to make sure you’d be totally fine, and I didn’t even do _that_ right,” Jack finally croaked, his throat raw and raspy. Rhys gently squeezed his hand, thumb stroking over the man’s rough knuckles.

“I mean,” Rhys began slowly after a long moment of silence, “you do realize the alternative is that I could be dead, right? I don’t…They showed me the pieces of the quill they got out of me. That thing was _huge_. I lost a lot of blood. I probably wouldn’t have made it out of R &D.”

Jack swallowed, nodding. There really had been a _lot_ of blood. He remembered how terribly it’d stained his sweater. 

“Yeah. And if you hadn’t thrown yourself in front of me like a frikkin’ moron, I’d have been the one with a quill through my chest.” He squeezed Rhys’ hand back. “And you didn’t exactly know I was packing an emergency hypo in my watch.”

Rhys let out a nervous chuckle, leaning carefully over the bed railing. His hair was so soft, free of its usual styling. 

“Heroic sacrifices don’t fix everything, I guess.”

“…Yeah.”

“But we still made it out….all right. Not perfect. But all right. That’s…gotta count for something, yeah?”

And it did. It meant more than Jack felt he could properly understand in this moment. Deep matters of life and death seemed so big, so beyond him. Jack hated feeling small and insignificant, as prone to the pratfalls of living as any bandit or underling. He needed something to ground him.

Luckily, Rhys took this moment to migrate from his chair and slide into Jack’s bed, mindful of the older man’s injuries as he lied alongside him. He kept one arm tucked to his chest, the other resting carefully against Jack’s hip as they cuddled underneath the thin comfort of the blanket. Jack breathing evened out, any esoteric thoughts drifting away as they pressed their bodies close.

Even the slight alarm that twinged through Jack when Rhys started to fall asleep, with his face slack and eyes closed, faded away at the feeling of warm, steady breath against his skin that soon lulled him into following.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you guys thought of this! Comments are always lovely to read :)


End file.
